Happy 8th Birthday History Podcast

We’re not history yet…

Hi everybody.  Well its seems its been 8 years since I first uploaded The Only Atomic Bomb Ever Dropped on America on June 5th (or 18th depends on if you use the blog post date or the mp3 upload date) 2005.  Thats a long time and while many things have changed for this podcast over those years, my desire to keep podcasting, writing and learning about history has not.  I may not have as much time for it as I once did, but I still enjoy it very much.  While you may not have noticed I have been making some changes across the website recently.  No podcasts yet, but I’m starting to spend some more time on this “little” hobby.  It seems people are still interested in this little podcast after 8 years.  I would like to share some statistics with all of you.

Even though I haven’t posted a podcast since July of 2012.  I’m still getting downloads.  For example, this month alone I’ve had 6,755 downloads.  If you look at the below chart, since January 2012 we have been a little up and down, but since March its all growth!

May was our best month so far!  I have no idea what happened around the 10th of May.  There was no unusual traffic on the website, only the downloads peaked.  So, maybe we were a featured podcast or something?  May 10th was a 57% increase over the daily average for May.  Whatever it was it was big, but it was over by the 12th.

In 2011 my host, libsyn, did some major tinkering and I don’t have visibility to what the monthly downloads were only a total number.  If you add the pre-2011 total to our post 2011 total we have had….get ready for it:

3,739,816 Downloads

Thats right millions!  I can’t believe it.  Wow!  Thank you to everyone who has downloaded and listened to one of our podcasts.  How cool is that?!  So, now it is time to do even more.  On of the many things I have done recently is add a subscription option to the site.  In the upper left of the page you should notice an option to give us your email address.  We won’t sell it to anyone else, its just for us.  I haven’t decided if we will do a quarterly or monthly email newsletter, but I do want to start doing a email newsletter of some kind.  I hope you will opt-in.  One thing is for sure, you don’t have to worry about getting too much email from me.  Besides not having time to send email, its expensive!

So, stay tuned.  I may not podcast often, but we are still here and we are not going anywhere.  Thanks for reading and have a great June!

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Old Blogger Post Imported

Hi all, well it only took me 6 years, but I have finally imported all of the blogger content from my old site (on blogger) to this new fancy-dancy website here.  You can see them in all their glory in the ‘imported from blogger‘ category. Also, in other behind the scenes news I also acquired the historypodcast.org domain. Yeah me! Now if only I could get the .com!  That is all.

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History Book Club

This will be a quick post to tell you about the great book group I found on goodreads.com.  It is for people who like to read history books.  Every month the book group reads different books.  You can choose to participate in all group reads or just in the ones that are reading books you are interested in.

The best part is the free books.  Ever once and a while the group leader will receive free books from publishers.  Around 30 copies are usually sent to him.  He then ask who would be willing to read the book and participate in the group discussion online.  If you agree you are put in the running to receive the book.  No shipping fees, nothing.  Just a free book with the understanding that you will participate in the discussion once it begins.  I did this already once for Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch. It was a great read and the discussion was wonderful.

If this sounds like something you would like to do head on over to Goodreads History Book Club.  Joining Goodreads is free and joining the history book club is free.  Right now the free book that we are all reading is Enemies: A History of the FBI. It is not too late to join in the discussion on this book if you want to pick up the book yourself and join in the conversation. Everyone is welcome.

On July 9, we start reading Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. You still have plenty of time to pick this one up. There are also other book readings going on in this group at the same time. So, have a look around and see if there is anything you are interested in. The Catherine read has already maxed out on the free books available, but join the group now so you don’t miss out on the next free book group read.

If you start reading the FBI or Catherine book as part of the online group read, please let me know on the goodreads discussion boards.  I’d like to know if some history podcast listeners are out there.  I will be reading the books right along with you.

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Producing a Podcast

For a long time I have wanted to write a post about what I do to produce a podcast.  For episode 119 The Thirty Years War I first did a lot of research.  I read about the war on wikipedia, then I searched the Internet for other sources.  I found Hank’s History Hour episode on the religious wars, and I found Nathan Barber’s website.  I listened to what Mr. Barber had on his website and I read the materials he had there.  Then I started writing long hand, 10 pages.  I also stopped at my local library to see what they had as far as books.  I borrowed The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy and Eyewitness Accounts of the Thirty Years War 1618-48.  I took a couple of tid-bits from the latter book, but the first book is huge and I just thumbed through it.

Then it was time to start recording.  Easier said then done though.  There are a few problems to recording.  First finding the time to have a quiet house.  For those who don’t know I have a little girl that is currently 2 and a half.  If you know two and a half year-olds, then you know they are not a quiet group.  Secondly, my microphone is packed up and at my in-laws home, since we have been trying to move for a year now, with no luck.  The housing market in Southern California is less than ideal.  So I had to record on the built in microphone on my laptop.

I went back and started using Audacity to record my podcast with.  It is free and easy to use.  After recording I use another program to normalize the audio so it is not too quiet or too loud anywhere.  That software is called levelator.  Then I import back into Audacity for finishing touches, like adding the intro music.  After which I usually add the tags to the podcast using iTunes, but I think I forgot to do that this last time, so you may notice that.

Then it is already to go and I upload to Libsyn.  After they have it, it is time to update my rss feed for the podcast and post the accompanying blog article.  Thats it.  Well, thats it for the audio portion of the podcast.  For the Thirty Years War I also did a video, a PDF history guide and a timeline.  I haven’t always done all these “extras”.  I probably won’t continue to do them either.  I didn’t get any feedback on any of the extras and I received very little feedback on the actual audio podcast.

There it is.  If there are any questions just post them in the comments and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.  Thanks!

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Bragging Rights

Big thank you to the folks at MakeUseof.com for sending some new listeners and readers our way!  History Podcast was featured on their website today.  If you are new to the site makeuseof readers just browse around and feel free to ask questions in the comments.  I’ll get back to you.  Thanks!

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30 Years War Timeline

This is my first time attaching a PDF in wordpress, so lets hope it works.  This is the last bit of information on the thirty years war.  I think we have covered this topic pretty well.  I’m thinking about the next podcast already.  Hopefully, I will be able to one again soon.

Thirty Years War Timeline PDF

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Osama Bin Laden is Dead

Tonight the President announced that Osama Bin Laden is dead.  This is just a quick post to thank and congratulate the men and women of our armed forces and intelligence community for their exceptional work!

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The Thirty Years War the Video

So here is the promised video.  All I did was create some slides to go along with the audio from the podcast.  I hope this is okay.  I’m looking for better ways to do this in the future, if you have any suggestions I would like to hear them in the comments.  I had some trouble viewing the video in Safari (try play in pop-up), but it works fine in Chome.  Let me know if there are issues with other browsers.  Thanks!

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History Guide of the Thirty Years War

I’ve put together a PDF that you can download for free to refer to the last podcast. It has links to many of the topics we talked about but did not go into detail about. Plus, it has pictures of the people discussed in the podcast. It has the full text of the last podcast. If you find any errors, please email me so I can update the file. Thanks!

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Podcast Reviews

While you guys are still fighting over what podcast topic to cover next, 30 years war and Japan’s aspirations leading to WWII are still tied, you might want to take a look at some of these podcasts. I’ve already reviewed a few to help you choose. Also, I’m going to start working on something for the 30 years war this weekend. But you can still vote on the poll below:

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1. Stuff You Missed in History Class – Read my review.
2. A History of the World in 100 Objects – no review yet, but stay tuned.
3. BackStory with the American History Guys – no review yet, but stay tuned.
4. Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know – not yet, but this is by the same folks as number 1 on this list, howstuffworks.
5. The Stuff of Genius – not yet, but I will do one soon.
6. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History – Read my review.
7. The History of Rome - Read my review.
8. In Our Time – This is an oldie but a goodie, I’ll have to do a review soon on this one too.
9. Laughing Historically – No review yet.
10. BBC History Magazine – Read my review.

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